I’m Lauren Halsey.
I'm based in South Central Los Angeles.
When I began this journey in 2006 in Community College,
I was super inspired by Archigram's walking city proposals
and their drawings for these structures some of them not even tangible.
That compelled me to think about these architectural interventions
that I wanted to see happen in empty lots in Los Angeles.
As an exercise, I really enjoy collage.
I get to build the worlds I wish I lived in.
I collapse all of these worlds: street, pyramid,
gorgeous nature, domestic worlds
into one composition to create new opportunities
that are about uplift, that are about togetherness.
I'm interested in producing a temple on a main boulevard in Los Angeles.
I thought, what better place to produce the prototype
than at the Met, where the collections of these amazing artworks
are exhibited for me to sample and pull from.
I would come to the Egyptian wing of the Met with my favorite Parliament
albums, blasting funkatizing
in a very live sense my response to them.
The Temple of
Dendur gave me the conceit to think about the carvings,
using them not only as like image, but to make walls
to build out the space.
My project for The Met is called the East Side of South
Central Los Angeles Hieroglyph Prototype Architecture.
It's this super idiosyncratic
remix of a Pharaonic temple.
All of the cladding is composed of glass fiber, reinforced
concrete, 750 or so engravings produced at my studio.
It's full of signage, tags,
fliers, documents I've been collecting and keeping of just like black L.A.
since 2007.
And so they're recontextualized into these sort of freestyle compositions
that conflate very rural South Central Los Angeles
with fantasyscapes, and my own mythos around funk with ancient Egypt
and what's here at the Met and my idea of maximalism.
You're meant to look and spend deep time.
My family has been in South Central
Los Angeles via the Great Migration since the twenties.
I feel honored to archive in a community sense,
all of our contributions, ones that I'm alive to experience,
but also ones that came before me.
This work is aspirational.
They're images around community transcendence and self-determination
and autonomy.
I thought how cool it would be
to pay homage to folks that I consider to be monuments to myself.
The Sphinxes I have represented my mother,
my brother Dominic Halsey, my cousin Anjeané Lucky,
and my very best friend and life partner and love of my life, Monique McWilliams.
I included them as a sort of protectors of the space
that you would have to enter the space through them.
For the column capitals, I have included my little cousin Dionne a.k.a.
BOP bop, who's been a part of the making and conceiving of this artwork
since we began in my grandmother's house years ago.
I also have Pissassio is one of my favorite artists in the world.
I have Barrington, a close friend
who as a creative director film maker.
Lastly, I have my cousin Damien Goodman, who's the founder of Downtown Crenshaw.
Just as far as the affect or the experience of the space.
I didn't want it to be this sort of cable czar.
Just wanted it to be open and for folks to feel welcomed.
The Oculus.
I thought it was just like this sort of spiritual portal
to the mothership, to the stars.
As folks are in the park, I wanted them to just have
a call and response to my project as they're in the moment of experiencing
Cleopatra's Needle, which then led me to think about scaling up
compositions for the exterior walls so that they were legible from the park.
As I was making this work.
I thought it wasn't enough to produce artwork for and about South Central
without also having some sort of tangible gift back as an extension
of my art practice I have a community
center called Summereverything
and my dream is once this returns back to L.A.,
I'll be able to have others contribute to the compositions as well.
And it just be a space of joy,
contemplation, education for folks that want to come.
I hope when
folks come to the Met and experience my piece, they walk away with a more
holistic view about South Central
that, ah, it's about violence.
They aren't about trade, they're very much about
survival, vibrancy, love.
And they also are just into me re-envisioning the hieroglyph as a form
to tell stories.